stand alone, above conflict and superior to malice.  In his own country there is no dispute as to his greatness or his worth.  Englishmen, the most unsparing censors of everything American, have paid homage to Washington, from the days of Fox and Byron to those of Tennyson and Gladstone.  In France his name has always been revered, and in distant lands those who have scarcely heard of the existence of the United States know the country of Washington.  To the mighty cairn which the nation and the states have raised to his memory, stones have come from Greece, sending a fragment of the Parthenon; from Brazil and Switzerland, Turkey and Japan, Siam and India beyond the Ganges.  On that sent by China we read:  “In devising plans, Washington was more decided than Ching Shing or Woo Kwang; in winning a country he was braver than Tsau Tsau or Ling Pi.  Wielding his four-footed falchion, he extended the frontiers and refused to accept the Royal Dignity.  The sentiments of the Three Dynasties have reappeared in him.  Can any man of ancient or modern times fail to pronounce Washington peerless?” These comparisons so strange to our ears tell of a fame which has reached farther than we can readily conceive.

Washington stands as a type, and has stamped himself deep upon the imagination of mankind.  Whether the image be true or false is of no consequence:  the fact endures.  He rises up from the dust of history as a Greek statue comes pure and serene from the earth in which it has lain for centuries.  We know his deeds; but what was it in the man which has given him such a place in the affection, the respect, and the imagination of his fellow men throughout the world?

Perhaps this question has been fully answered already.  Possibly every one who has thought upon the subject has solved the problem, so that even to state it is superfluous.  Yet a brilliant writer, the latest historian of the American people, has said:  “General Washington is known to us, and President Washington.  But George Washington is an unknown man.”  These are pregnant words, and that they should be true seems to make any attempt to fill the great gap an act of sheer and hopeless audacity.  Yet there can be certainly no reason for adding another to the almost countless lives of Washington unless it be done with the object in view which Mr. McMaster indicates.  Any such attempt may fail in execution, but if the purpose be right it has at least an excuse for its existence.

To try to add to the existing knowledge of the facts in Washington’s career would have but little result beyond the multiplication of printed pages.  The antiquarian, the historian, and the critic have exhausted every source, and the most minute details have been and still are the subject of endless writing and constant discussion.  Every house he ever lived in has been drawn and painted; every portrait, and statue, and medal has been catalogued and engraved.  His private affairs, his servants, his horses, his